


After Vega

by Artemis1000



Series: Vega [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, I don't even know yet if there will be actual romance in this, M/M, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Slow Burn, Verbal Battle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8315542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: A year after Starkiller, Finn visits Kylo Ren in prison to gain valuable intelligence for the Resistance. He thought it would be straightforward. Get in, get the information, get out. But neither of them has ever been good at keeping things simple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, the sequel to "What Happens on Vega" - aka when your crack fic spawns a serious sequel.
> 
> Vega in a nutshell: during Finn's cadet training they had a drunken Las Vegas marriage as result of FO shenanigans. Finn tried to reach out to Kylo afterwards. Kylo rebuffed him. They went their separate ways. TFA happened. The epilogue ends with the Resistance learning Kylo was captured, but Leia can't get access - politics. So Finn, still legally married to him, offers to go.
> 
> As part of a series started long before TLJ, this story is in no way TLJ-compliant. We diverge right after the end of TFA, a year later the Republic is still at war with the First Order and holding out well enough. The Resistance is playing a large role in this war. As the battle of Crait never happened, Luke Skywalker is still out there. Snoke remains in charge of the First Order.

The wedding ring felt heavy on Finn’s finger.

“Yes, I’m here to see my husband,” he said again. This was the fourth checkpoint, and the fourth time he was incredulously quizzed as soon as the guards checked his permit. He raised the hand with the ring.

It might have been formed out of some random piece of metal via telekinesis, and by a very drunken Force user at that, but Kylo had done a good job with it. After thorough polishing it looked very official. Rey had been so awkward when she offered him the bottle of polish.

It had been her peace offering. Poe’s had been to fly him to this New Republic high-security prison hidden in an out-of-the-way nebula. Rey would have come, too, but she didn’t have the necessary security clearance. Being the Jedi hope of the galaxy meant little to bureaucrats.

“There is no mistake, I’m speaking of Kylo Ren,” he added when they continued to linger over the permit.

Finn didn’t begrudge the guards their incredulity. Infamous crimes aside, he doubted Ren was the kind of compliant prisoner who made you think _yes, this is the kind of guy someone would want to marry_.

He was led down more tunnels and through another check, and then it was Finn’s turn to be shocked, for, “are you letting me enter his cell?!”

The two guards accompanying him exchanged a look, before the tall Twi’lek turned to him. “We have the ysalamiri positioned perfectly around his cell. We can’t provide the same arrangement in a meeting room on such short notice, or guarantee for a safe transport.”

He read hostility between the lines, and understood. Of course. He was Ren’s husband. In their eyes it made him complicit in his crimes. And he should probably stop looking terrified of being reunited with his beloved spouse.

Only… As he was ushered through the double door system, Finn’s heart kept pounding ever faster.

The first time he had run into Kylo Ren, the man had drunkenly married him.

The last time he had run into Kylo Ren, he had hacked up Finn’s back, nearly killing him and leaving him injured for months.

There was a distinct downward spiral to their encounters. Finn wasn’t keen to explore the next logical step.

Finn had been fine with the idea of talking to him through a transparisteel wall. He hadn’t counted on being locked in with him.

A lifetime of military discipline made him walk through the door anyway.

 

Kylo’s cell was a large enough room, though Finn figured it would be very small if you were never allowed to leave it, with oddly rounded edges, the walls a dull rust-red. Three steps took you down into the cell. Finn lingered on the top stair even after the door had closed behind him. The hiss of it sealing shut had sounded very final to his ears.

Ren sat on his cot, hunched over, hands folded between his knees. He raised his head to face Finn, and there was a moment of disorientation in which Finn couldn’t believe it was actually him.

The black hair on his chin and upper lip looked far too scruffy to fit into Finn’s picture of a First Order leader. It changed his face a lot, though he couldn’t put his finger on the how, or why, or what. Mostly, he just looked very different from the monster in the snow that had been all chalky-white face, black robes and madness in his eyes.

Finn hadn’t recognized that madman he fought on Starkiller, he might as well have been a complete stranger. But this scraggly man in the cell? He, Finn realized, might turn out to be just as much of a stranger, and it made his stomach churn with unease. It wasn’t until now that he understood how much he’d been counting on Vega’s familiarity.

“They told me you would come. I decided not to believe them till I saw you with my own eyes.” He didn’t sound like the man who had yelled traitor at him, or snarled and spat like some rabid animal.

Finn felt some of the tension seep out of him. Maybe his first impression had been wrong. This bearded man in grey prison overalls reminded Finn more of his Vega lover than his Starkiller would-be killer. He might be capable of more kindness than cruelty.

“Yeah. I’m here.” He looked down at the tips of his shoes, and could feel the tips of his ears begin to burn. He decided to venture two steps closer.

“You can walk,” Ren noted. There was something distinctly not-friendly creeping into his amiable tone of voice. It sent a warning prickle down Finn’s spine. “I didn’t think you would ever walk again.” He let a heartbeat pass. “If I had known you would recover, I would have stabbed you in the heart like Han Solo.”

to be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...it has only been ages. I'm sorry.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Center yourself. Both Rey and Poe had warned him that Kylo Ren would toy with him, that he didn’t need the Force to crawl into people’s heads. It had been kind of them, but Finn knew that already.

Finn gave him a friendly smile and chuckled as if Kylo had made a joke. “Don’t hold it against me, but I’m glad you didn’t.” He took the last step, but that was where his grand show of feeling at ease came to an abrupt end, for he didn’t know what to do with himself. There wasn’t much more than the bed and some shelves to Ren’s cell, and a hygiene section separated from the rest of the room by transparisteel.

The last time they’d sat on a bed together, they’d been buck naked and dealing with the fact that they’d had wedding night sex with a stranger. Right after Ren had professed regret over not having killed him was bound to make for even more awkward bed-sharing.

“Forgive me. You’re the most interesting thing that has happened to me since the Republic’s squeamish third-rate interrogators ran off with their tails tucked between their legs.” His lips quirked. “Turns out they don’t appreciate constructive criticism.”

This time Finn’s laugh was real. “I know. I heard about you bullying your interrogators. Rumor has it you made a few of them cry.”

“Only one,” Kylo demurred.

“The Republic’s not happy with your lack of cooperation.”

Kylo scoffed loudly. “Let me guess. They are handing me over to the Resistance in the hope that General Organa can appeal to the good man hidden deep inside me and I’ll spill all the secrets that are keeping me alive.”

“Actually, they want you executed for war crimes, while your mother believes you can be convinced to collaborate.”

Kylo Ren looked like he was trying very hard to hide his anger. “I’m surprised there is still a Republic to try anyone… or maintain prisons which can hold Force users.”

Finn shrugged. “The New Republic is more than the Hosnian system.”

In truth, it had been a nightmare of a year for everyone, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Ren. Finn may not be a born Republic citizen, but like everybody else, he took pride in its hardiness, and the determination of its people not to let Starkiller win.

Finn dared to take a step closer. “If you thought there’s no Republic left you wouldn’t have given yourself up to them.” He let a heartbeat pass, almost asked why he hadn’t given himself up to the Resistance instead but thought better of it. The answer was obvious. Finn had been there to witness it on a bridge on Starkiller base.

Kylo graced him with another snarl, a flash of white teeth much like when they dueled in the snow. But Finn saw no true fight left in him. “I didn’t give myself up, I was captured!”

“Hm,” was all Finn dared say. While the first rumors had included some of him being captured, every proper report had spoken of him surrendering. Nobody believed it to be anything but a trap, thus him being treated as a prisoner instead of a defector.

These words earned him a disgruntled look. “Whatever you are hoping to achieve here, it won’t work.”

Finn gave a small, awkward shrug. “Well. One of my objectives was to learn what state you are in, both physically and mentally. I’ve achieved that, at the very least.” Finn sat down at the very end of the bed, as far away from Kylo Ren as he could.

He had been good at not thinking about the previous time they’d shared a bed, but maybe sitting down had been a mistake. It was becoming ever harder not to remember.

They hadn’t always been enemies. The ring on his finger proved as much. If he tried he could still remember how it had felt to desperately try to stifle his moans in the pillow while Kylo slid into him. He remembered how he had flushed when Kylo later, stone cold sober, no excuse, had looked at him with unadulterated desire.

But he also remembered these same black eyes turning cold and dismissive mere days later. Being cruelly rebuffed when he tried to reach out to him, no salvation from his loneliness, just one more person who decided he wasn’t worth their time.

Most of all, he remembered the burn of Kylo’s lightsaber on Starkiller Base.

“It took me months to recover,” he said quietly. His voice shook a little. Finn clasped his hands in his lap, that would keep him from fiddling. “I was in a coma for weeks, and then it took months and several more surgeries until I could walk again.”

Kylo had tensed up. It made him look more like himself, even bearded and clad in grey. “I never claimed I would be a good husband to you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

They fell into an awkward silence, and Finn wondered if Kylo was thinking of Vega, too.

“Do you understand now why I had to turn you away?”

Finn started. He hadn’t expected Kylo to speak first. “I…?” No, he didn’t understand. He didn’t even know what Kylo was referring to.

“When you came to me, days later,” Kylo snapped, “you were trying to do… something.” Impatience sharpened his voice, but his body language betrayed there was just as much discomfort to it.

“Be your friend,” Finn offered.

“Yes. That.” Kylo’s scorn was undisguised. “I had to chase you away. You were already terrified of me. I wasn’t going to wait until I proved all your worst fears true.” His chin rose in stubborn triumph. “But now I have done it anyway, so you see I was right all along.”

“That…” Finn blinked. That didn’t make an awful lot of sense, but he didn’t know if Kylo’s logic ever made sense anywhere outside of his own twisted mind. Probably not.

“And now you’re different.” All frustration now. Becoming agitated. Training permitted Finn to read all the signs, they had studied signs of aggression so they would be able to tell if a crowd was about to turn hostile. “You used to be scared of me. You talked too much and too fast, and you kept squeaking like a terrified mouse.”

Okay, that had to be confusing to Kylo, Finn could get that. He tried to send understanding vibes. “It’s been several years. I’m not a cadet anymore, or a Stormtrooper at all.” Most of all, he was done letting people push him around but Kylo probably wouldn’t respond well to being reminded of that.

Kylo’s eyes narrowed at him in blatant dislike. “But I could still hurt you. I could kill you. You could scream, but you’d be dead before the guards can get in here.”

“Probably.” He wasn’t that frightened cadet anymore. It was a choice Finn had made on the way to the prison. No matter what Kylo Ren did or said, he would not revert back to the man Kylo had known. He’d grown into himself, he knew his worth and so did all the people who mattered. The times when Kylo Ren could send him scuttling were over.

He leaned forward, elbows propped up on his knees. “You know, I’d really have felt better if I could have talked to you through transparisteel. But I’m done being scared of the First Order.”

“And yet you wear my ring on your finger!” The bellow was still ringing in Finn’s ears when Kylo was suddenly in front of him, right in his face, and oh kriff, he was so tall, so much taller than Finn remembered and he looked absolutely furious…

His left hand was grabbed and yanked forward. Finn’s body went with it and then he couldn’t even say who threw the first punch, but suddenly they were a mass of flying fists and then Finn hit the ground hard, back and head first. He oofed, then oofed again when Kylo’s fist went for his jaw while he was still seeing stars, but then it was Kylo groaning in pain as Finn’s punch hit the side of his head.

He knew no more how long they fought than he knew who thrown the first punch – Kylo had started it, obviously, by grabbing him, that had been the first attack no matter who punched first.

What he did know was that by the end of it his knee was digging painfully into the small of Kylo’s back.

What he did know was that Kylo Ren wasn’t used to fighting without his powers.

“Was that really necessary?!” Finn wheezed. “Did you need to prove your superiority that badly? Look, I know you were a bigwig and I was just a lowly Stormtrooper and you thought you had to teach me my place, but you already beat me once, wasn’t that enough for you?”

Kylo bucked, but Finn’s hold on him didn’t budge. He had his arms firmly secured, and he wasn’t stupid enough to let him get leverage with his legs. He’d spent years training hand-to-hand combat. Kylo Ren had obviously spent far less time on it lately.

“You betrayed me!” Kylo howled.

“I chose to be free!” Finn snapped back. “It had nothing to do with you!”

Despite knowing better, he released Kylo then and retreated to the far end of the cell; not because he feared him more now than he did before, but simply because he wished to bring more distance between them before he suffocated.

“You’ve got no right,” he ground out between clenched teeth, “you’ve got no right to fling betrayal in my face when I had nothing and you had everything. I just wanted to go somewhere I’d be a person, not a number.” He shook his head. “Sorry if that’s a personal insult to you.”

He wanted out of here. No, he needed out of here, or he really would suffocate.

Finn crossed the few steps that separated him from the door and rang the buzzer.

“Leave,” Kylo hissed behind him. “Run. You always run away.”

The door opened, three armed guards standing in a half-circle around it.

“And you’re always lying to yourself,” Finn muttered as he stomped out of the cell.

As he made his way through the many security checkpoints again, his anger was replaced by a strange numbness and beneath that even, a sense of loss he couldn’t quite grasp. Maybe his dreams of Vega had truly been shattered today.

And yet, if he didn’t wish to disappoint General Organa, his mission had barely begun.


End file.
